Nest Tuesday, April 12th, at 6pm, the Center for Worker Education, City College, CUNY & The Frances S. Patai Fund is hosting a talk by Prof. Isabelle Rohr on American Medical Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The lectures is free and open to the public, at the Center for Worker Education, 7th Floor Auditorium...
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Nick Lyne offers an overview and analysis in today's Iberosphere of the case brought on behalf of Judge Garzón to the European Court of Human Rights (see also last week's ALBA editorial on the topic):
Garzón’s supporters claim there is nothing coincidental about the fact that the trial for malfeasance...
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More heart-wrenching clippings from New York’s Spanish-language press, this time from the Brooklyn-based paper, Frente Popular. The war is over, and the international network of Spanish Republican immigrants and exiles is abuzz with desperate attempts to locate loved ones. Spaniards fleeing from Franco have been corralled into horrific concentration camps in southern France, and...
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Can the lessons of the Spanish Civil War be applied to the situation in Libya? The debate has been ongoing. George Will contributed to the discussion yesterday in his Washington Post column:
Now the administration must decide how to characterize those on whose behalf we have gone to war. They are...
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Shooting continues apace for Philip Kaufman's new film on Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. Yesterday Caught on Set published a series of images taken in the hills of Livermore, California.
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The progressive policies of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero, who this week announced that he will not be running for a third term, have been alarming conservatives and Catholics beyond Spain. When the Pope visited earlier this past fall--an event which brought thousands of Spaniards to the streets in protest--he stunned...
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On Saturday, April 23, Columbia University and the International Center of Photography will present a day-long symposium titled “China and Spain, 1936-39: Robert Capa and the Global Popular Front.” Bringing together eleven scholars from the U.S. and China, the symposium will explore the interconnections between the Spanish Civil War and the concurrent Chinese...
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Jonathan Freedland writes in the Guardian on the Valle de los Caídos, Franco's monstrous monument, which continues to attract controversy:
Spain's socialist government understands the potency of Valle de los Caídos, or Valley of the Fallen. Indeed, much energy has been devoted to taming it. Since 2009, the site has been closed to general...
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The legendary camera factory and photography agency are teaming up for a series of multimedia essays, the first one of which
examines the legacy of Magnum photographers and Leica users from the Spanish Civil War to the present including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Constantine Manos, Susan Meiselas, Alex...
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The Guardian's Giles Tremlett, author of Ghosts of Spain, asks Barcelona publishers, among other things, why Spanish writers are still so obsessed with the legacy of the Spanish civil war. Listen to the podcast here.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish Republic. When Tom King started digging into his family history seventy years later, he fell from one surprise into the other.
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Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting for revolution.”
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Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting students and faculty—and won.
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Targeted by the far right, Rutgers historian Mark Bray and his family went into exile in October. Speaking with The Volunteer from Madrid, he reflects on the current political situation. “Fascism shamelessly takes over institutions that, under liberal norms, are supposed to remain neutral.”
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922) disabled, hospitalized, died February 10, 1942 Their father, Abraham, died March 21,1930 Their mother, Nettie, died April 29, 1953 Bernie Brilliant student, graduated High...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has created two sites of historical memory whose significance extends far beyond Capa’s original images.
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half its territory was controlled by fascist rebels. Cities were being bombed, and civilians were killed by the thousands. Thousands more were forcibly displaced. But Kea...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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